Various articles, including biomedical devices, are formed of organosilicon-containing materials. One class of organosilicon materials useful for biomedical devices, such as soft contact lenses, is siloxy-containing hydrogel materials. A hydrogel is a hydrated, crosslinked polymeric system that contains water in an equilibrium state. Hydrogel contact lenses offer relatively high oxygen permeability as well as desirable biocompatibility and comfort. The inclusion of a siloxy-containing material in the hydrogel formulation generally provides higher oxygen permeability since siloxy-based materials have higher oxygen permeability than water.
Another class of organosilicon materials is rigid, gas permeable materials used for hard contact lenses. Such materials are generally formed of silicon or fluorosilicon copolymers. These materials are oxygen permeable, and more rigid than the materials used for soft contact lenses. Organosilicon-containing materials useful for biomedical devices, including contact lenses, are disclosed in the following U.S. patents: U.S. Pat. No. 4,686,267 (Ellis et al.); U.S. Pat. No. 5,034,461 (Lai et al.); and U.S. Pat. No. 5,070,215 (Bambury et al.).
Siloxy-containing materials are of keen interest as ophthalmic materials as they have characteristically high gas permeability, but suffer the disadvantage of being very hydrophobic. This hydrophobicity results in poor wettability and comfort of the resulting materials when in contact with the cornea, and creates difficulty in compatibilizing such siloxy-containing monomers with hydrophilic monomers to result in a transparent copolymer with an ideal blend of properties.
Soft contact lens materials are made by polymerizing and crosslinking hydrophilic monomers such as 2-hydroxyethyl methyacrylate, N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone, methacrylic acid and combinations thereof. The polymers produced by polymerizing these hydrophilic monomers exhibit significant hydrophilic character themselves and are capable of absorbing a significant amount of water in their polymeric matrices. Due to their ability to absorb water, these polymers are often referred to as “hydrogels.” These hydrogels are optically clear and, due to their high levels of water of hydration, are particularly useful materials for making soft contact lenses. Siloxane-type monomers are well known to be poorly soluble in water as well as hydrophilic solvents and monomers and are therefore difficult to copolymerize and process using standard hydrogel techniques.
The present invention provides novel hydrophilic organosilicon-containing monomers which are useful in articles such as biomedical devices including contact lenses.